Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao’s recent announcement regarding making Hyderabad a WiFi-enabled city has come as great news for many, especially the startup community.
Murali Bukkapatnam, president of the Hyderabad chapter of TiE, was present in the meeting where Mr Rao expressed interest in having a “WiFi-enabled city”. He says, “Innovation is all about collaboration and communication. Sometimes a member of the team can’t proceed in his work, even if it’s urgent, because his teammate doesn’t have Internet.”
He adds that it is still too early to say whether or not the WiFi will be free.
IIT student Ankit Mishra, who runs a startup called StoryXpress, is thrilled. “Students generally can’t afford data plans currently available in the market. So we buy cheaper plans and get low Net speed. It does hamper our work. And these days, students are joining startups, launching startups themselves and developing apps for other firms as part-time. We need Net all the time.”
WiFi is going to be a boon for mobile app developers, especially, says Sanjay Enishetty of 50k Ventures, which provides seed funds to upcoming startups. He says, “Once the city is WiFi- enabled, dependence on a laptop or tablet will go down, obviously. So, it creates a huge market for mobile apps and mobile app developers. These days, every website is turning into a mobile app, as people operate on smartphones.”
Nawaz Dhandala says it will also open up a lot of opportunities for the common man, and not just mobile app developers like him.
“We tech-savvy people already know the benefits of storing data on cloud. With the WiFi everywhere, I think every common man would move to cloud too. And I see a new market opening up mobile apps targeting the middle-class people.”
